Over a century ago, long before anyone became aware of the term multicultural,
Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called "The Ballad of East & West"
whose initial line reads: "East is East and West is West and never the
twain shall meet." Kipling seemed to be saying that all of us are, to some
extent at least, unable to adapt to the ways of others. Joseph Rudyard
Kipling ought to have known, he was born in Bombay, India, where his father,
John Lockwood Kipling, was a teacher at the local Jeejeebhoy School of
Art. Kipling himself was essentially part of both cultures, having been
born to expatriates and partly raised and working in a foreign environment
before returning to the place of his birth.

The British in their colonisation process tended, or at least attempted,
to adapt foreign conditions to themselves rather than adapting themselves
to foreign conditions. One has only to look around their former colonies
to see abundant evidence of this. The names of places or towns show clearly
their origins: New York, New Jersey, New England, Nova Scotia (New Scotland
that is), New South Wales, Christchurch, etc. The British always believed
in making the mountain come to Mohamed and they almost always got away
with it because of their military power.
So the question that might be asked is, if Westerners find it hard to make
the transition to the East, why would Easterners find it any easier to
make the transition to the West? Especially why in the main, they do not
seem to do so, although many of them emigrate to western countries?
Perhaps the answer to this question lies more in the specific environment
from which emigrants come. Immigrants from the Caribbean or West African
countries seem to adapt much more easily to western cultures and concepts
than do those from eastern lands, although there are some exceptions. People
from India, while tending – as do most immigrants anywhere – to form, live
and marry within their own communities, at least in the initial generations,
very often integrate into the societies in which they find themselves.
Indeed Canada has quite a number of such immigrants, or their offspring,
serving as MPs in Ottawa. This is not quite so true though of many people
coming from other countries in the Middle East or from places like Pakistan
who happen to be followers of the Islamic faith. Islam, unlike other formal
religious faiths, is an integral way of life. The Muslim (“One who submits”)
can allow no separation between his life and his religion, his politics
and his faith.The
clash of cultures

Anyone taking even the most cursory look at those who adhere to the religion
of the Prophet Mohammed will soon discover many reasons to explain the
obvious difficulties facing someone from an Islamic background arriving
in a western, democratic country. The clash of cultures is quite stark;
slavish obedience to an ancient code versus liberty and free speech. The
Saudi Arabian embassy site in the USA has an Islamic Affairs Department,
and one can find there statements such as: “Muslims are required to raise
the banner of jihad in order to make the Word of Allah supreme in this
world.” Not a stance likely to get you accepted gladly in your new land.
MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) from which the above quote
was taken has many other quotes from the Islamic Affairs Department on
its site, among them the following: “Today's false idols, which dominate
over the entire world, are Democracy, Capitalism, Socialism and Communism.
Islam instead calls for a Khilafa (Caliphate) based on consultation, and
a just economic system based on Zakat and a prohibition of usury.” Hardly
a resounding call for free market economics and libertarianism.
In the USA, it is believed that some 80 per cent of the mosques there are
under the control of the Wahabists to whom Saudia Arabia has contributed
countless billions of its petroleum dollars in order to dispense that particularly
authoritarian form of Islam. Indeed, Toronto’s Salaheddin Centre too is
said to be funded by Saudi Arabian Wahabists dollars. Dollars which, as
Turkey’s Catholic Archbishop Giuseppe Bernardini said, have not been used
to create work in the poor Islamic nations of North Africa or the Middle
East.
In the United Arab Emirates, there is a popular religious channel called
Al-Majd TV, somewhat less well known in the west than al-Jazeera. Speaking
on it recently was Saudi Professor Nasser bin Suleiman al Omar who offered
his listeners the following: “Islam is advancing according to a steady
plan, to the point that tens of thousands of Muslims have joined the American
army and Islam is the second largest religion in America. America will
be destroyed. But we must be patient.”
Half a century ago, Lebanon was predominantly Christian but now it is predominantly
Muslim. Ethiopia is another ancient Christian land where Muslims have come
to outnumber Christians in the last 100 years. In fact, Islam is now the
second largest religion, not just in the USA but in Europe and Australia
as well. In Europe there are some 15 million Muslims, and in France alone
they account for one tenth of the population. Even more interesting is
that the French government now estimates that some 50,000 French Christians
are converting to Islam each year, although there are no French imams among
the 230 imams in France. If population trends continue, France could have
a Muslim majority by 2040. In Brussels, the capital of Belgium and home
of the EU bureaucracy, the most popular name for baby boys during the last
four years was Mohammed. Here in Canada we have over half a million Muslims
living here at the moment, and in Britain there is three times that number.Preaching
to the world

In Canada, now presumably the fourth best country in the world, where freedom
of speech at a Quebec radio station is menaced, the ones doing the menacing,
our unelected friends at the CRTC (Canadian Radio Television Commission)
awarded a licence to al-Jazeera. One wonders if it too will lose its licence
if those videos of the beheading of westerners, which al-Jazeera seems
pleased to show once in a while, do not have the required Canadian victim
content!
One of al-Jazeera’s popular presenters is the controversial Egyptian imam,
Dr Al Qaradawi, of whom the UK’s BBC cooed approvingly that he has “star”
status among the world’s Muslims. He is the one at whose feet the obsequious
Mayor of London grovelled recently, and is a staunch promoter of human
rights such as executing homosexuals, the right of men to beat their wives,
and the murder of innocent Jews. During the ensuing uproar it went unnoticed
that he also wants to conquer Europe. Those who have difficulty believing
all this should listen to his popular TV show Sharia and Life, presumably
coming to you soon on al-Jazeera. Again, according to MEMRI which translates
the imam’s broadcasts, he prophesied in 1999 that, “Islam will return to
Europe. The conquest need not necessarily be by the sword. Perhaps we will
conquer these lands without armies. We want an army of preachers and teachers
who will present Islam in all languages and in all dialects.” This man
is not some bizarre fringe performer but someone whose programmes are extremely
popular and are being watched by millions throughout the Middle East and
Europe.
Another preacher, the Saudi Sheikh Said al Qahtani, said on a recent TV
broadcast that “We did not occupy the US, with eight million Muslims, using
bombings. Had we been patient and let time take its course, instead of
the eight million there could have been 80 million [Muslims], and 50 years
later perhaps the US would have become Muslim.” This appears to be an implied
criticism of Al-Qa’eda for waking a slumbering West, and is hard to dismiss
as a simple aberration. Indeed, the quite moderate former director of the
Islamic Cultural Centre in London, Dr Zaki Badawi, has admitted that, “Islam
endeavours to expand in Britain. Islam is a universal religion. It aims
to bring its message to all.”

“Recently an item in the press mentioned that Canadian judges could be
enforcing Islamic law, or Sharia, soon in disputes between Muslims. Could
this be the precursor of an Islamic penal law which will institute sentences
such as the flogging or the stoning of adulterous women?”

Perhaps Bernard Lewis put it as succinctly as possible in his recent best-selling
book The Crisis of Islam when he wrote “The presumption is that
the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all
the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule.” The
Muslim tradition divides the world into two parts, Dar al Islam, where
Muslims rule, and Dar al Harb, the “field of war” where the infidels live,
something we might do well to remember. Conquering
religions

The West is constantly castigated for having imposed its decadent values,
culture and language on Third World countries, but one rarely reads that
Islam colonised lands containing advanced and ancient civilizations. How
long did it take the Spanish to retrieve their country in the lengthy “Reconquista”?
Something like 700 years if memory serves. Elsewhere, a central Asian people,
the Turks, converted to Islam and conquered the ancient Christian land
of Anatolia (now Turkey).
In 1453 they captured Constantinople, then the centre of the Eastern Orthodox
Church. They turned the sublime Hagia Sophia, which had been one of the
most important churches in Christendom for almost 1,000 years after it
was built in 537A.D, into a mosque, adding minarets. For four hundred years
the Turks occupied Greece and much of the Balkans, turning the Parthenon
into a mosque and besieging Vienna, before retreating as their endurance
declined. Talk to a Greek Cypriot or a Greek about Islam and the Turks,
but be careful to put some cotton wool in your ears first! The imam of
the mosque of the Saudi government’s King Fahd Defence Academy, Sheikh
Muhammad bin Abd al Rahman al ’Arifi, wrote recently, “We will control
the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it.”
They already have a mosque there.
Of course, before anyone writes to tell me, I am aware that Christianity
has been just as much a conquering religion in its time. The Spanish destroyed
the ancient civilisations of Central and South America quite ruthlessly
as they spread their message of Christian love. It was Christians too who
colonised the Americas and Australia, annihilating the natives as they
went. All the while, Christian missionaries were at work busy converting
much of Africa. Now they have stopped their conquering and converting;
indeed in much of the Christian world, in places like Quebec and France
to name but two, they seem to have stopped believing in Christianity as
well.
If there are doubters still about things like freedom of religious belief
then consider that the Saudi Arabian government bans all churches, while
the west is building, if not paying for, so-called Islamic Cultural centres.
Some of the funding for the UK’s East London mosque came from such bodies
as the European Development Fund, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets,
Surestart (the UK Government's programme to deliver the best start in life
for every child by bringing together: early education, childcare, health
and family support), and the London Development Agency.

In some Islamic countries even the preaching of Christianity is banned,
contrasting starkly with the West where the right to practice religion
is enshrined in our laws and constitutions. Those 50,000 French converts
to Islam, mentioned earlier, have all done so freely without reproach;
any who convert to Christianity from Islam can expect death threats at
the very least. Ask any of the Christian Pakistani refugees that Canada
has sent back to their own country, if they are still alive that is. While
the Crusades were, by and large, attempts to retrieve lands which were
formerly Christian, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John
Paul II, apologises for them almost constantly. Rather as an old lady might
apologise to a mugger for trying to retrieve her purse, was the way the
Archbishop of Canterbury described it.
Contrast this with the statements of his opposite numbers which call loudly
for the overthrow of Christendom. This is not to claim either that all
conversion to Islam has been by the sword. Indonesia was peaceably converted
by Muslim traders and is now the most populous of all the Islamic nations.
But the conquests haven’t stopped; Islam has continued spreading in sub-Saharan
Africa most noticeably in Nigeria and Sudan. Heard from Darfur recently?Bend
to the Sharia

Even the most vociferous critics of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions
by President Bush are unlikely to believe that he did so in order to spread
the word of Jesus. The supreme irony in this is that by deposing the hated
Saddam Hussein, who ran the most secular of Arab regimes, the USA, publicly
in favour of creating an Iraqi democracy, is actually transferring power
to the imams. We read too of Christian churches in Iraq being attacked.
Over the centuries, religions have changed because they needed to do so
in order to survive. The Roman Catholic Church split into two when the
Eastern Church broke away. Additional fragmentation occurred at the Reformation
as numerous other sects came into being and today who knows how many Protestant
sects there are?
Even Judaism, the basis of both Christianity and Islam, has changed over
the almost four thousand years of its existence and did so by making changes
which allowed its devotees to live and survive in various cultures and
countries. This does not seem to be true of Islam, where there appears
to be no room for adaptation to the conditions of the 21st century, nor
seemingly any incentive to do so. The laws of the 7th century were essentially
designed for a nomadic people and have remained virtually unchanged ever
since. This is in part why modern concepts of freedom, human and women’s
rights, equality and tolerance have not advanced in the Muslim world. Indeed
there is conflict in many countries which have large Muslim populations
and one only has to think about the Philippines and India to realise this.
India, where Islamic invaders burned their way through the country periodically
from the 8th century onwards, has endured sectarian violence for centuries,
culminating in the creation of Pakistan. Mohammed’s injunction to “Kill
those who join other gods with God wherever you may find them” was enthusiastically
followed in India, where not only Hindus but Buddhists – a religion which
has never fought a religious war – were slaughtered and their women and
children taken into slavery. The Hindus were fair game, not being “of the
book” as are Christians and Jews, although too numerous to eliminate completely.
A Sharia regime grants the status of Dhimmitude to the Dhimmis (a protected
people) allowing them to practice their religion. They do so, but under
a series of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the command of
the Koran that non-Muslims shall “feel themselves subdued.” This denial
of equality of rights and dignity is part of the Sharia which the global
Islamists would like to impose everywhere they go, ultimately the entire
world. Recently an item in the press mentioned that Canadian judges could
be enforcing Islamic law, or Sharia, soon in disputes between Muslims.
Could this be the precursor of an Islamic penal law which will institute
sentences such as the flogging or the stoning of adulterous women? What
about other Muslim cultural features such as arranged marriages, divorce
at will (by the husband of course), revenge killings, and female circumcision?
Islam does not take kindly to music and dancing, gambling is forbidden
and while not absolutely prohibited, drinking alcohol is discouraged. Will
Canada become like the Malaysian state, controlled by an Islamist party,
which says that any Muslim who converts to another faith has three days
in which to repent, failing which he faces having his property forfeited
and being sentenced to death?
As one Dutch imam pointed out “The Sharia does not have to adapt to the
modern world because these are divine laws. People have to bend to the
Sharia.” What many of today’s politically correct ‘liberals’ and social
engineers will think of as expressions of ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’,
are perceived by Islamist radicals as simply more examples of decadent
Western weakness. Judging from what is known of the internal structure
of many Islamic communities living in Western countries, the notion that
consent would always be genuine is quite implausible. Those Islamic radicals
pushing for the introduction of Shariah into Western countries do not want
to “live in peace” with us, they seek the destruction of all that we understand
and accept as Western values. Should they fail to convert us, as their
writings show clearly, they would be prepared to accept our actual physical
destruction.
The aforementioned Dr Al Qaradawi is also the spiritual guide of the hard-line
Muslim Brotherhood, which is growing across Europe, and whose leader Muhammad
Mahdi Othman ’Akef declared recently, “I have complete faith that Islam
will invade Europe and America, because Islam has logic and a mission.”
Can we be confident that he was not including Canada in his prediction?
Can we be certain that our politicians understand that Islam is not simply
a religion, but a way of life? Given the extremely short term views of
Western politicians, whose concern for their country’s future rarely extends
beyond the next election, the answer is likely to be more restrictions
on the freedom of their own populations. We can expect also the continuing
politically correct condemnation, using ‘hate speech’ laws, of those who
try to raise awareness of the problems likely to arise when intolerance
is invited into a society in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism.
Maybe Kipling was on to something after all.